44 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [13:2— Feb., 1917 



in colors. One is a lover of the earth, marvelling in its wonder, 

 renewing himself in its youth. Infectious is the love of the lover. 

 We as teachers feel it. We live with the enthsuiasm of these 

 precious teachers whom we teach. We try to aid them to realize 

 their loves. 



The great loves are these : the love of life ; the love for another, 

 and of one's fellows; the love of things; the love of the earth. 

 Remove any one of them, and life loseth its savor and there is 

 no completeness. The love of life and of another need no urging, 

 neither any explanation from me. The love of Things should need 

 no explanation, and yet do we misunderstand. So much have we 

 suffered that we discard the things we have seen in our sufferings. 

 So common is our suffering that every common object is a token 

 of it. Many are the travellers who look with a shudder on every- 

 thing that belongs to a ship. Certain objects are emblems of 

 mourning. Certain forms, odors, sounds, set us into sadness. 

 Only in the objects and the scenes that we cannot see do we find 

 freedom from old associations. What we call the ideals have been 

 the imcomparables. 



Yet now do \ve find in Things their intrinsic beauties, fashioned 

 of God just as truly and just as completely, do we belie\^e, as is 

 the soul of man. Good are they because they are what they are, 

 not because we would have them otherwise. The divinity is in 

 them, the divinity of origin, of perfectness, and of mystery. 

 Not one of them do we understand. The heavens were beyond 

 the ancients, so that the heavens declared his handiwork. The 

 cell is beyond the moderns, so that the cell doth declare his handi- 

 work. The amphioxus is beyond us, as truly as are the stars. 

 The slow scarce-alive amoeba is beyond us, the sparrow that 

 falleth is beyond us, the lilies of the field are beyond us. 



Verily, all these are the marvels. Verily all these are good to 

 know. Within the bosom of the planet are locked all these 

 mysteries, yet not forbidden to anyone, not withholden of any 

 man. They do not represent the old racial sorrows, as once we 

 thought they did. New and yet old, changing, moving, drifting 

 in the great flux of life, they are ever mature and ever in the process 

 of creation, perishing utterly and yet reproducing their kind. 



Here today in this great Convocation Week fifty societies meet, 

 devoted all to the love of the earth. These people devoted to 

 these great ends are, as I think of them, the great lovers. The 



